Chemical Decontamination & Degassing of the Crude Unit

Results Achieved

No delays in schedule, and only standard PPE required for vessel entry

No additional expenses required for supplied air equipment and manpower

Chemical profiles

Created for the dissolution and recovery of asphaltenes in process equipment, pipelines and storage tanks.

Rapid absorption of vapor-state hydrocarbons in an innovative encapsulant for effective decontamination and degassing of hydrocarbon processing equipment.

FQE® LEL-V Eco is a proprietary blend of safe, non-hazardous surfactants and a proprietary solvent that uses the properties of a surfactant to outperform many solvents used in industrial cleaning applications.

Designed for instantaneous and permanent elimination of Hydrogen Sulfide present in refining and other process equipment.

Prevents hazardous oxidation of iron sulfide and the potential dangers of a flash fire or explosion in hydrocarbon processing equipment.

This was the first vapour-phase application where the entire unit was to be degassed and decontaminated simultaneously. Previously, the client had broken down the unit into individual critical path vessels with each degassing operation taking place over 48-hours. The entire crude unit would typically take a total of 4 days. Using our process, it took a total of 24-hours to fully degas the entire crude unit.

The crude unit scope consisted of the following major equipment and all interconnecting piping:

FQE Solvent-H was vapour-phase injected into the Crude Column, Vacuum Heater, and Vacuum Column for 6-hours as part of the preliminary decontamination process to target the heavy oils and sludges.

Following the preliminary injection, all equipment was cleaned by vapour-phase steam injection with our FQE H2S, FQE LEL-V, and FQE LEL-V Eco products. During the final hours of the degassing step, the system was then treated with FQE Pyrophoric to deactivate the iron sulfide scale.

After a total of 24-hours of chemical injection, all critical path equipment was successful degassed with no LEL’s arising from light end hydrocarbons or hydrogen sulfide present on analysis. Furthermore, upon breaking containment there was no iron sulfide scale combustion encountered.

Manpower designated for vessel entry entered without any delays, minimum PPE, and no additional expenses were required for supplied air operations.